. . . the lot of every human being
is determined by his pains
andpleasures, and
that his happiness corresponds with the degree
inConatuswhich his pleasures are great and his pains
are small.

Of the laws of nature on which
the condition of man depends, thatwhich is attended with the greatest
number of consequences is thenecessity of labor
for obtaining the means of subsistence as well asthe means of the greatest
parts of our pleasures. This is no doubtthe primary cause of
government; for if nature had producedspontaneously all the objects which
we desire, and in sufficientabundance for the
desires of all, there would have been no sourceof dispute or of
injury among
men, nor would any man have {
Economicpossessed the means of
ever acquiring authority over another.Freedom }

When it is considered that most of the
objects of desire and even themeans of subsistence are the product of labor, it
is evident that . . .

Thus slavery, forced
labor, legalized expropriation, class monopoly Social
Changeof knowledge, have been giving
way to free labor, social security,universal literacy, free education,
open access to knowledge,
andthe beginnings of universal leisure,
such as is necessary
for wideparticipation in political duties.
If vast masses of people in Asia,Africa, and South America still
live under primitive
conditions anddepressing poverty, even the ruthless
colonialism of the nineteenthcentury brought to these peoples the ideas
that would release them. 'The heart of darkness,' from
Livingstone on to Schweitzer,
waspierced by a shaft of light.

Every city is divided into four equal
districts, and in the middleof each district is
a market for all kinds of
commodities.Whatever each household produces is brought here and
storedin warehouses, each kind of goods
in its own place. Here thehead of every household looks for what
he or his family needsand carries off what he wants
without any sort of payment orcompensation. Why should anything be refused
him? There isplenty of everything, and no
reason to fear that anyone willclaim more than he needs. Why
would anyone be suspected ofasking for more than is needed,
when everyone knows therewill never be any shortage?
Fear of want, no doubt, makes
{ The
sourcesevery living creature greedy and avaricious,
and man, besides, of
greed. }develops these qualities out of
pride, which glories in puttingdown others by a superfluous display of possessions.
But this {
A long, long
timesort of vice has no place whatever
in the Utopian way of life. in
coming }

When we have achieved world-wide
fragmentation, it is not
unnatural to think about a world-wide integration.
Such
auniversality of conscious being
for mankind was dreamt of byDante, who believed that men
would remain mere brokenfragments until they should be united in an inclusive
conscious-ness. What we have today, instead of a
social consciousnesselectrically ordered, however, is a private subconsciousness
orindividual "point of view" rigorously
imposed by older mechani-cal technology. This is a perfectly natural
result of "culture lag"or conflict, in a world suspended
between two technologies.

{E2:XLIX(69):126;
D2:Bk.III—Spinoza clearly trusts
that the reader is capable of under-
standing
terms in their true—that is, Spinozistic—meaning.}

Therefore we put our hope in You, HASHEM
our God, that we Importantmay soon see Your mighty
splendor, to remove detestableidolatry from
the earth, and false gods will be utterly
cut off,to perfect
the universe through the Almighty's sovereignty.Then all humanity will call
upon Your Name, to turn all theearth's wicked
toward You. All the world's inhabitants
willrecognize and know that to
You every knee should bend, {Enlightenedevery tongue should swear(5).
Before You, HASHEM, our God,self-they will bend every knee and cast
themselves down and to theinterest}glory of
Your Name they will render homage,
and they will allaccept upon themselves the yoke
of Your Kingship that You {Synthesizemay reign
over them soon and eternally.
For the kingdom isSpiritual
andYours and You will reign
for all eternity in glory as it is writtenMaterial
}
in Your Torah:
HASHEM shall reign for all eternity (1).And
it is
said: He gazes at no iniquity
in Jacob { unenlightened
man }sees no evil schemes in Israel{
enlightened
man } (2).

{
evolutionary
}EB— 4a
: the Hegelian
process of ^ change
in which a conceptST:Note
4or its realization passes over
into and is preserved andfulfilled
byits opposite; also: the critical investigation ofthis
process.{Example: feudalism
into capitalism into socialism into communism—with
this
progression there is a parallel
with the evolution of religion to a
Universal Religion.Theistic
and Non-theisticSpinozistic
meaning—D2:Bk.III:235.}Elwes[37]b (1) usually plural but singular or plural
in construction:development through the stages of
thesis, antithesis, andsynthesisinaccordancewith thelawsofdialecticalmaterialism.{ Hegel
identified dialectic as the tendency of a notion
to pass over into its own negation as the result of conflict between
its inherent contradictoryaspects. }(2) : the investigation
of this process. (3) : the theoretical application of this
process especially in the social sciences.

Process of thinking by dialogue,
discussion, debate, or argu-ment. In ancient Greece, the term was
used literally. Dialecticis questioning and conversation
for Socrates,
study of theForms
for Plato, and careful reasoning for Aristotle.

German philosophers applied the
term more narrowly toparticular patterns of thinking.
Thus, Kant's
"TranscendentalDialectic" is an attempt to
show the
general futility of abstractmetaphysical speculation,
but dialectic is, for Hegel,
the funda-mental process of development—in
both thought and reality—from thesis to antithesis to synthesis.

RH— 3. the
art or practice of debate or conversation by which the truth
of a theory or opinion is arrived at logically.RH—Hegeliandialectic—1. an interpretive method in
which someassertible proposition(thesis)is necessarily opposed by an equallyassertible and apparently contradictory
proposition (antithesis),the contradiction being reconciled
on a higher level of truth by athird proposition (synthesis).

EB— 1a
: a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality
and that all being and processesand phenomena can
be explained as manifestations or results of matter.b : a doctrine that the only or the highest values
or objectives lie in {
better, peace
of mind }material
well-being and in the furtherance of material progress.
c : a doctrine that economic or social change is
materially caused.-- compare HISTORICAL MATERIALISM.

RH— 2. the philosophical
theory that regards matter and itsmotions as constituting the universe,andall
phenomena,includingthose of mind, as due to material agencies.

Philosophical doctrine expounded by
Engels
and Marx.
By Robinson4:121emphasizing the independent reality
of matter and the primary
value of the natural world, they rejected the idealism
of Hegel.
But they fully accepted his notion of dialectic as an
inexorable
process of development in thought, nature, and history.

EB—1
a : a theory that theology
and metaphysics
are earlierimperfect modes of knowledge and
that positive knowledge isbased on natural phenomena and
their properties and relationsas verified by the empirical sciences. b : LOGICAL
POSITIVISM--:
a 20th century philosophical move-The
ISM Bookment that holds characteristically
that all meaningful statementsare either analytic or conclusively verifiable or
at least confirmableby observation and experiment and that metaphysical
theories aretherefore strictly meaningless
-- called also logical
empiricism.

[1] An immense
role in the development of logic,
and in preparingthe ground for modern views
on its subject matter, a role far from fully
appreciated, was played by Spinoza.
Like Leibniz, Spinoza rose highabove the mechanistic
limitations of the natural science of
his time.Any tendency directly to universalise
partial forms and methods ofthinking only
useful within the bounds of mechanistic,
mathematical
natural science was also foreign to him.[2] Insofar as logic
was preserved alongside the doctrine of substance,
Spinoza treated it as an applied
discipline by analogy with medicine,since its concern proved not to be the invention of
artificial rules but theco-ordination of human intellect with the laws
of thought understood as{ Nature
}an 'attribute'
of the natural whole,
only as 'modes of expression' of the universal order and connection
of things. He also
tried to work outlogical problems on the basis
of this conception.[3] Spinoza understood thought
much more profoundly and, in essence,dialectically, which is
why his figure presents special interest
in thehistory of dialectics;he was probably the only one of the great thinkersof the pre-Marxian era who knew how to unite brilliant
modelsofacutely{
seebody-mind?
}dialectical thought with
a consistently held materialistprinciple E2:Bk.XIV:2:53(rigorously applied throughout
his system) of understanding thoughtBk.XIV:2:199.and its relations to
the external world
lying in the space outside thehuman head. The
influence of Spinoza's ideas on the
subsequentdevelopment of dialectical
thought can hardly be exaggerated.
'It istherefore worthy of
note that thought must begin by placing itself at thestandpoint
of Spinozism; to
be a follower of Spinoza is the essentialcommencement of all Philosophy.'[Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel]Britannica[4] But orthodoxreligiousscholasticism,
in alliance with subjective{
accuse
} {
an atheist
}idealist
philosophy, has not ceased to flog
Spinoza as a 'dead dog',treating him as a living and dangerous
opponent. Elementary analysis{
How?
}reveals that the main principles of Spinoza's
thought directly
contradictBritannicathe conception of 'thought'
developed by modernpositivism all alongthe line. The most modern
systems of the twentieth century still clashin sharp antagonism in Spinoza;
and that obliges us to analyse thetheoretical foundation of his conception
very carefully, and to bring outthe principles in it that, in rather
different forms of expression perhaps,remain the most precious principles of any scientific
thinking to this day,{
Why
heatedly? }and as such are very heatedly disputed by ourcontemporaryopponentsof dialectical
thought.[5] Hegel
once noted that Spinoza's philosophy was very simple
andeasy to understand. And in
fact the principles of his thinking, whichconstitute the essential commencement
of all Philosophy, i.e. the realLaw of Organismsfoundation
on which alone it is possible to erect
the edifice of philos-Golden
Ruleophy as a science, are
brilliant precisely in their crystal clarity, free ofall reservations and ambiguities.[6] It is not
so easy, however, to bring these brilliant
principles outbecause they are decked out in the solid armour
of the constructions offormal logic and deductive
mathematics that constitute the 'shell'
ofSpinoza's system, its (so to say) defensive
coat of mail. In other words,{
? }the real logic of Spinoza's
thinking by no means coincides with theformal logic of the movement
of his 'axioms', 'theorems', 'scholia',
andtheir proofs.[7] 'Even
with philosophers who gave their work
a
systematic form, e.g. Spinoza, the
real inner structure of their system is quite
distinctfrom the form in
which they consciously presented it,' Karl
Marx wroteto Ferdinand Lassalle. { Marx
would have wanted Spinoza to explicitly express theexample
I give above. }[8] Our job
then cannot be once more to paraphrase
the theoreticalfoundations on which Spinoza built
his main work, the Ethics, and theconclusions that he
drew from them by means of his famous 'geometricmodus'. In
that case it would be more proper simply to copy out the textof the Ethics itself once
again. Our job is to help the reader to under-stand the 'real inner structure'
of his system, which far from coincideswith its formal exposition,
i.e. to see the real 'cornerstone'
of hisreflections and to show what
real conclusions were drawn from them,or could be drawn from them, that
still preserve their full topicality.[9] That can
only be done in one way, and one way only, which is toshow the real problem
that Spinoza's thought came
up against quiteindependently of how he himself
realised it and in what terms heexpressed it for himself and for others
(i.e. to set the problem out in thelanguage of our century),and
then to trace what were the real principles(once more independently of Spinoza's
own formulation of them) onwhich he based the solution of the
problem. Then it will become clearthat Spinoza succeeded in finding
the only formulation exact for histime of a real problem that
remains the great problem of our day, onlyformulated in another form.[10] We formulated this
problem in the preceding
Essay One. Mark
Twain

This difficulty was sharply expressed
in its naked logical form byDescartes. In its
general form it is the central problem
of anyBk.XX:18819.philosophy whatsoever, the problem of the
relationship of 'thought'to the reality existing outsideit and independently of it,to
the worldPinealGlandof things in space and time, the problem
of the coincidence of theDescartes'
errorforms of thought
and reality, i.e. the problem of truth or, to put it intraditional philosophical language, the
'problem of the identity ofthought {2P1}
and being-{extension2P2}'.

Spinoza found a very simple solution
to it, brilliant in its simplicity for ourBk.XX:18819.day as well as his: the
problem is insoluble only because it has beenDurant3wrongly posed. There is
no need to rack one's brains over how theLord G-D 'unites'
'soul' (thought)
and 'body'in
one complex,representedE2:Bk.XIV:2:53initially (and by definition) as
different and even contrary principlesDescartes'
errorallegedly existing separately
from each other before the 'act' of this'uniting' (and thus, also being able to exist after
their 'separation'; whichis only another formulation of
the thesis of the immortality
of the soul,one of the cornerstones
of Christiantheology
and ethics). In fact, theresimply is no such situation;
and therefore there is
also no problem of'uniting' or 'co-ordination'.{Cash
Value—awareness that everything
is a part of one organism—G-D.}[11] There
are not two different and originally
contrary objects ofinvestigation body and thought, but only one
single object, which is theBk.XX:18819.thinking body of living,
real man (or other analogous
being, if suchexists anywhere in the Universe),
only considered from two differentand even opposing aspects or points of view. Living,
real thinking man,the sole thinking body with which
we are acquainted, does not consistof two Cartesian
halves 'thought lacking a body' and a 'body
lackingthought'. In relation to real man
both the one and the other are equallyfallacious abstractions, and one cannot in the
end model a real thinkingman from two equally fallacious abstractions.[12] That is what
constitutes the real 'keystone' of the whole
system,1D6
- ONEa very simple truth
that is easy, on the whole, to understand.[13] It is not a special
'soul',installed
by God in the human body as in atemporary residence, that thinks, but the body
of man itself. Thoughtis a property, a mode
of existence, of the body, the
same as itsextension,
i.e. as its spatial configuration and position
among otherbodies.[14] This
simple and profoundly true idea was expressed this way bySpinoza in the language of his time: thought
and extension are not
twospecial substances
as Descartes
taught, but only two attributes of
oneBk.XX:18819.{
thing
} ^
PinealGlandand the same
organ; not two special objects, capable
of existingseparatelyandquite independently of each other,but only two differentand even opposite aspects under
which one and the same
thingappears, two different modes
of existence, two forms of the manifesta-{ substance}tion of some third
thing. { ^ ? }{ ? }{substance that is G-D that
is Nature }[15] What is
this third thing? Real infinite Nature,
Spinoza answered.It is Nature that extends in space and 'thinks'. The
whole difficulty of theCartesian metaphysics arose
because the specific difference of the realworld from the world as only imagined
or thought of was considered tobe extension, a spatial, geometric
determinateness. But extension assuch just existed in imagination,
only in thought.
For as such it cangenerally only be thought
of in the form of emptiness,
i.e. purelynegatively, as the complete absence
of any definite geometric shape.Ascribing only
spatial, geometric properties to Natureis, as Spinozasaid, to think of it in an imperfect
way, i.e. to deny it in advance one ofits perfections. And then it
is asked
how the perfection removed fromNature can be restored to her again.[16] The same argumentation
applies to thought. Thought as such isthe same kind of fallacious abstraction as emptiness.
In fact it is only aproperty, a predicate, an attribute
of that very body which has spatialattributes. In other words one can say very little
about thought as such;it is not a reality existing separately from, and
independently of, bodies{extension}but only a mode
of existence of Nature's bodies.
Thought and spacedo not really exist by themselves, but only
as Nature's bodies linked bychains of interaction into a measureless and
limitless whole embracingboth the one and the other.WikipediA[17] By a simple
turn of thought Spinoza cut the Gordianknot
of the'psychophysical
problem', the mystic insolubility of
which still tormentsthe mass of theoreticians
and schools of philosophy, psychology,physiology of the higher nervous
system, and other related sciencesthat are forced one way or
another to deal with the delicate theme ofthe relation of 'thought'
to 'body', of 'spiritual' to 'material', of 'ideal' to'real', and such like topics.[18] Spinoza showed
that it is only impossible to solve the problembecause it is absolutely wrongly
posed; and that such posing of it isnothing but the fruit of imagination.[19] It is
in man that Nature really performs,
in a self-evident way, thatvery activity that we are accustomed to call 'thinking'.
In man, in the formof man, in his person, Nature
itself thinks, and not at all some specialsubstance, source, or principle
instilled into it from outside. In
man,therefore, Nature thinks of itself,
becomes aware of itself,
sensesitself, acts on
itself. And the 'reasoning',
'consciousness', 'idea','sensation', 'will', and all
the other special actions that DescartesPinealGlanddescribed as modi of thought,
are simply different modes of revealinga property inalienable from Nature as a whole,
one of its own attributes.[20] But if thinking
is always an action performed by a natural and soby a spatially determined body,
it itself, too,
is an action that is alsoexpressed spatially, which is why there is not
and cannot be the causeand effect
relation between thinking and bodily action
for which theCartesians were looking.
They did not find it for the simple reason thatno such relation exists in Nature,
and cannot, simply because thinkingand the body are two different
things at all, existing separately andtherefore capable of interacting,
but one and the same thing, onlyexpressed by two different modes or considered in
twodifferentaspects.[21] Between body and
thought there is no relation of cause and
effect,
but the relation of an organ (i.e. of a spatially determinate
body) to themode of its own action. The
thinking body cannot cause changes inthought, cannot act on thought,
because its existence as 'thinking' isthought. If a thinking body does
nothing, it is no longer a thinking bodybut simply a body. But when
it does act, it does not do so on thought,because its very activity is thought.[22] Thought as
a spatially expressed activity
therefore cannot also
be secreted from the body
performing it as a special 'substance' distinctfrom the body, in the way
that bile is secreted from
the liver or sweatfrom sweat glands. Thinking is
not the product of an action but theaction itself, considered
at the moment of its performance, just
aswalking, for example, is the mode
of action of the legs, the 'product' ofwhich, it transpires, is the space walked. And
that is that. The productor result of thinking may be an exclusively
spatially expressed, or exclu-sively geometrically stated, change in
some body or another, or else inits position relative to other bodies.
It is absurd then to say that the onegives rise to (or 'causes') the other. Thinking
does not evoke a spatiallyexpressed change in a body but exists
through it (or within it), and viceversa; any change,however
fine, within that body, induced by the effecton it of other bodies, is directly
expressed for it as a certain change inits mode of activity, i.e. in thinking.[23] The position
set out here is extremely important also because
itimmediately excludes any possibility of
treating it in a vulgar materialist,mechanistic key, i.e. of identifying
thought with immaterial processesthat take place within
the thinking body (head, brain tissue),
whilenevertheless understanding that thought
takes place precisely throughthese processes.[24] Spinoza was
well aware that what is expressed and performed inthe form of structural, spatial changes
within the thinking body is not atall some kind of thinking
taking place outside of
and independently ofthem, and vice versa (shifts of thinking
by no means express immanentmovements of the body
within which they arise). It
is thereforeimpossible either to understand thought
through examination, howeverexact and thorough, of the
spatially geometric changes in the form ofwhich it is expressed within
the body of the brain,
or, on the contrary,to understand the spatial, geometric
changes in the brain tissue fromthe most detailed consideration of the
composition of the ideas existingin the brain. It is impossible, Spinoza constantly
repeated, because theyare one and the same, only expressed
by two different means.[25] To try to
explain the one by the other simply means to double thedescription of one and the same fact, not yet
understood and incompre-hensible. And although we have
two full, quite adequate descriptionsof one and the same event, equivalent
to one another, the event itselffalls outside both descriptions, as the
'third thing', the very 'one and thesame' that was not yet understood
or explained. Because
the eventtwice described (once
in the language of
the 'physics of the brain' andonce in the language of the
'logic of ideas') can be explained
and{definition}correspondingly' understood only
after bringing out the cause
evokingthe event described but not understood.
{ Example:
to understand LOVE.
}{
a transcendent
}[26] Bishop
Berkeley ascribed the cause to
^God.
And so did Descartes, Malebranche,
and Geulincx. The shallow, vulgar
materialisttries to explain everything by the purely
mechanical actions of externalthings on the sense organs
and brain tissue, and takes for the causethe concrete thing, the sole object, that is
affecting our bodily organisa-tion at a given moment and
causing corresponding changes in ourbody, which we feel within ourselves and experience
as our thinking.[27] While rejecting
the first explanation as
the capitulation of {prejudice}philosophy before religioustheological twaddle, Spinoza
took a verycritical attitude as well toward
the superficially materialist-mechanisticexplanation of the cause of
thought. He very well
understood that itwas only a 'bit' of
an explanation, leaving in the dark the very difficulty.that Descartes was
forced to bring in God to explain.Refuge
of ignorance.[28] For to
explain the event we call 'thinking', to disclose its effectivecause, it
is necessary to include it in the chain
of eventswithin whichit arises of necessity
and not fortuitously. The 'beginnings'
and theMy
italics.'ends' of this chain are clearly not located
within the thinking body at all,but far outside it.[29] To explain
a separate, single, sensuously perceived fact passingmomentarily before our eye, and
even the whole mass of such facts,as the cause of thought means
to explain precisely nothing.
For this
very fact exerts its effect (mechanical, say,
or light) on stone
as well,but no action of
any kind that we describe as 'thinking' is evoked in thestone. The explanation must
consequently also include those relationsof cause and effect that of necessity
generate our own physical organ-isation capable (unlike a stone)
of thinking, i.e. of so refracting theexternal influences and so transforming
them within itself that they are{
picture
on a panel }experienced by the thinking
body not at all only as changes arisingwithin itself, but as external things,
as the shapes of things outside thethinking body.[30] For the
action produced on
the retina of our eye by a ray of lightreflected from the Moon is
perceived by the thinking being not simplyas a mechanical irritation within the
eye but as the shape of the thingitself, as the lunar disc hanging
in space outside the eye, which meansthat the Ego,
the thinking substance
or creature, directly feels not theeffect produced on it by the external thing
but something quite different,viz. the shape or form (i.e.
the spatial, geometric configuration) andposition of this external body,
which has been evoked within us as aresult of the mechanical or light
effect. In that lies both the enigma andthe whole essence of thinking as the mode of
activity of a thinking bodyin distinction to one that does not think. It will
readily be understood thatone body evokes a change by
its action in another body; that is fullyexplained by the concepts of
physics. It is difficult, and from the angleof purely physical concepts (and
in Spinoza's time of even 'purely'mechanical, geometric concepts) even
impossible, to explain just whyand how the thinking body
feels and perceives the effect caused byan external body within itself
as an external body, as its, and not as itsown shape, configuration, and position in space.[31] Such was the enigma,
in general, that Leibniz and Fichte
came upagainst later—but Spinoza had
already found a fully
rational, thoughonly general, theoretical
solution. He clearly understood that
theproblem could only be
fully and finally solved by quite
concreteinvestigation (including anatomical
and physiological) of the
materialmechanism by which the thinking body (brain)
managed to do the trick,truly mystically incomprehensible (from
the angle of purely geometricconcepts). But that it did
the trick that it saw the thing and
not the{ picture
on a panel—as on a photographic film. }changes in the particles of the retina and
brain that this body caused by
its light effect
within the brain was an undoubted fact; and a fact callingfor fundamental explanation and
in a general way outlining paths formore concrete study in the future.[32] What can
the philosopher say here categorically, who remains aphilosopher and does not become a physiologist,
or an anatomist, or aphysicist? Or rather, what can he
say, without plunging into a game ofthe imagination, without trying to construct
hypothetical mechanisms inthe fancy by which the trick mentioned 'might', in
general,be performed?What can he say while remaining
on the ground of firmly
establishedfacts known before and independently
of any concrete, physiologicalinvestigation of the inner mechanisms
of the thinking body, and notcapable either of
being refuted or made doubtful by any further probingwithin the eye and the skull?[33] In the given,
partial, though very characteristic case,
there isanother, more general problem,namely that of the relation of philosophyas a special science to the
concrete research of the natural sciences.Spinoza's position on this point
cannot in principle be explained if westart from the positivist idea
that philosophyhas made all
its outstandingachievements (and makes them) only by purely empirical
'generalisationof the progress of its contemporary natural
sciences'. Because naturalscience did not find the answers
to the problem before us either inthe seventeenth century, in Spinoza's
time, or even in our day, threehundred years later. Furthermore, the natural
science of his day did noteven suspect the existence of
such a problem; and when it did, knewit only in a theological formulation.
As for the 'soul' or 'spirit', and ingeneral everything connected
one way or another with
'spiritual',psychic life, the natural scientists
of the time (even the great ones likeIsaac Newton) found themselves
prisoners of the prevailing
(i.e. relig-{scriptural}{prejudices}ious, theological)
illusions. Spiritual life they gladly left to the
Church,
and humbly acknowledged its authority, interesting
themselves exclu-sively in the mechanical characteristics
of the surrounding world. Andeverything that was inexplicable on purely mechanical
grounds was notsubjected to scientific study at
all but was left to the competence ofreligion.[34] If
Spinoza had in fact tried to construct his philosophical system bythe method that our contemporary positivism
would have recommendedto him, it is not difficult
to imagine what he would have produced as a'system'. He would only have
brought together the purely mechanicaland religious,mystical
'general ideas' that were guiding all (or almost all)naturalists in his day. Spinoza
understood very clearly that religious,theological mysticism
was the inevitable complement of a purely mech-anistic (geometrical, mathematical) world
outlook, i.e. the point of viewthat considers the sole 'objective' properties
of the real world to be onlythe spatial, geometrical forms and
relations of bodies. His greatnesswas thathedid not
plod along behind contemporaneous natural science,i.e. behind the one-sided, mechanistic
thinking of the coryphaei of thescience of the day, but subjected
this way of thinking to well substanti-ated criticism from the angle of the specific
concepts of philosophy as aspecial science. This feature of
Spinoza's thinking was brought outclearly and explicitly by Frederick
Engels: 'It is
to the highest credit ofthe philosophy of the time
that it did not let itself be led astray by therestricted state of contemporary
natural knowledge, and that fromSpinoza right to the great
Frenchmaterialists it insisted on explainingthe world from the world itself
and left the justification in detail to thenatural science of the future.' [Dialectics of
Nature][35] That is
why Spinoza has come down in the history of science asan equal
contributor to its progress with
Galileo and Newton, and not{an
undistinguished imitator, follower, or successor of an important writer,
painter, etc.} as their epigone, ^ repeating
after them the general ideas that could bedrawn from their work. He
investigated reality himself from the special,philosophical angle, and did not generalise
the results and ready-madefindings of other people's
investigation, did not bring together
thegeneral ideas of the science of his day and the methods
of investigationcharacteristic of it, or the
methodology and logic of his contemporaryscience. He understood that that
way led philosophy up a blind alley,and condemned it to the
role of the wagon train bringing up in the rearof the attacking army the
latter's own 'general ideas and methods',including all the illusions and prejudices
incorporated in them.[36] That is
why he also developed 'general ideas
and methods ofthought' to which the natural
science of the day had not yet risen, andarmed
future science with them, which recognised his
greatness threecenturies later through the pen
ofAlbertEinstein,
who wrote that
hewould have liked 'old Spinoza' as
the umpire in his dispute with NielsHeisenberg PrincipleBohr on the
fundamental problems of
quantum mechanics
rather thanCarnap or Bertrand
Russell, who were contending for the
role of the'philosopher of modern science'
and spoke disdainfully of Spinoza'sphilosophy as an 'outmoded'
point of view 'which neither science norphilosophy can nowadays accept'.
Spinoza's understanding of thinkingas the activity of that same
nature to which extension also belonged
isan axiom of
the true modern philosophy
of our century, to
which truescience is turning more and
more confidently and consciously in ourday (despite all the attempts to discredit it)
as the point of
view of truematerialism.{Def. IIb}[37] The brilliance
of the solution of the
problem of the relation ofthinking to the world of bodies in space outside thought
(i.e. outside thehead of man), which Spinoza
formulated in the form of the thesis thatthought and extension are not
twosubstances,but only two attributes of{
see Axiom I}one and the same
substance, can hardly be exaggerated. This solution
immediately rejected every possible kind of interpretation and investiga-{prejudicial,
dogmatic} mind-body
dualismtion of thought by the
logic of spiritualist and dualist constructions, so
making it possible to find a real way
out both from the blind alley ofthe dualism of mind and body
and from the specific blind alley of^Bk.XIV:1:96.Hegelianism.
It is not fortuitous that Spinoza's profound idea
only first
found true appreciation by the dialectical
materialistsMarx and Engels.Even Hegel
found it a hard nut to crack. In fact, on the decisive
point,he returned again to the position
of Descartes, to the thesis that purePinealGlandthought is the active cause
of all the changes occurring in the 'thinkingbody of man', i.e. in the
matter of the brain and sense organs,
inlanguage, in actions and
their results, including in that the instrumentsof labour and historical events.[38] From Spinoza's
standpoint thought before and outside
of itsspatial expression in the
matter proper to it simply does not
exist.All talk about an idea that
first arises and then tries to find materialsuitable for its incarnation, selecting
the body of man and his brain asthe most suitable and malleable
material, all talk of thought first arisingand then 'being embodied in
words', in 'terms' and 'statements', andlater in actions, in deeds
and their results, all such talk, therefore, fromSpinoza's point of view, is
simply senseless or, what is the same thing, {
prejudice,
dogmas}simply the atavism
of religioustheological
ideas about the 'incorporeal
soul' as the active cause of the human body's
actions. In other words,the sole alternative to Spinoza's
understanding proves to be the con-ception that an idea
can ostensibly exist first somewhere and somehowoutside the body of the
thought and independently of it,
and canthen 'express itself' in that body's actions.[39] What is
thought then? How are we to find the true answer to thisquestion,i.e.to give a scientific
definition of this concept, and not simplyto list all the
actions that we habitually subsume under
this term(reasoning, will, fantasy, etc.),
as Descartes did?
One quite
clearrecommendation follows from Spinoza's
position, namely: if thought isthe mode of action of
the thinking body, then, in order to define it,we are bound to investigate
the mode of action of the
thinking bodyvery thoroughly, in contrast to
the mode of action (mode of existenceand movement) of the non-thinking
body; and in no
case whatsoeverto investigate the structure or
spatial composition of this body in
aninactive state. Because the thinking
body, when it is inactive, is nolonger a thinking body but simply a 'body'.
[40] Investigation of all the
material (i.e. spatially defined) mechanismsby which thought is effected
within the human body, i.e. anatomical,physiological study of the
brain,of course,is a most interesting scientificquestion; but even the fullest
answers to it have
no direct bearing onthe answer to the question
'What is thought?'. Because that is anotherquestion. One does not ask
how legs capable of walking are con-structed, but in what walking consists.
What is thinking as the action of,albeit inseparable from, the material
mechanisms by which it is effected,yet not in any way identical
with mechanisms themselves? In the onecase the question is about
the structure of an organ, in the other aboutthe function the organ performs.
The 'structures, of course, must besuch that it can carry out
the appropriate function; legs are built so thatthey can walk and not so that
they can think. The fullest description ofthe structure of an organ,
i.e. a description of it in an inactive
state,however, has no right
to present itself as a description,
howeverapproximate, of the function
that the organ performs, as a descriptionof the real thing that it does.[41] In order to understand
the mode of action of the thinking body it isnecessary to consider the mode
of its active, causal
interaction withotherbodies
both 'thinking' and 'non-thinking',and
not its inner structure,not the spatial geometric relations
that exist between the cells of itsbody and between the organs located within its body.[42] The cardinal distinction
between the mode of action of a thinkingbody and that of any other body, quite clearly noted
by Descartes andthe Cartesians, but
not understood by them, is that the former activelybuilds (constructs) the shape (trajectory) of its
own movement in spacein conformity with the shape (configuration
and position) of the otherbody, coordinating the shape
of its own movement (its own activity)with the shape of the other body, whatever
it is. The proper, specificform of the activity of a thinking body consists consequently
in univer-sality, in that very property
that Descartes actually noted as the chiefdistinction between human activity
and the activity of an automatoncopying its appearance, i.e. of
a device structurally adapted to someone limited range of action even better than a human,
but for that veryreason unable to do 'everything else'.[43] Thus the
human hand can perform movements in the form of acircle, or a square, or any other intricate
geometrical figure you fancy,so revealing that it was not designed structurally
and anatomically inadvance for any one of these
'actions', and for that very reason iscapable of performing any action.
In this it differs, say, from a pair ofcompasses, which describe circles
much more accurately than thehand but cannot draw the outlines
of triangles or squares. In otherwords, the action of a body that
'does not think' (if only in the form ofspatial movement, in the form of
the simplest and most obvious case)is determined by its own inner constructionby its 'nature',and
is quiteuncoordinatedwith
theshapeof theother
bodies among which it moves.It therefore either disturbs the
shapes of the other bodies or is itselfbroken in colliding with insuperable obstacles.[44] Man,
however, the thinking body, builds his movement
on theshape of any other body.
He does not wait until the insurmountableresistance of other bodies forces
him to turn off from his path;
thethinking body goes freely round
any obstacle of the
most complicatedform. The
capacity of a thinking body to mould
its own actionactively to the shape of
any other body,
to coordinate the shape ofits movement in space with the shape and distribution
of all other bodies,Spinoza considered to be its distinguishing
sign and the specific featureof that activity that we call 'thinking' or 'reason'.[45] This capacity,
as such, has its own gradations and
levels of'perfection', and manifests itself
to the maximum in man, in any casemuch more so than in any other
creature known to us. But man is notdivided from
the lower creatures at all by that impassable boundary thatDescartes drew between them by
his concept of 'soul'
or 'spirit'. Theactions of animals, especially of the higher
animals, are also subsumed,though to a limited degree, under Spinoza's definition
of thinking.[46] This is
a very important point, which presents
very real interest.For Descartes
the animal was only an automaton,
i.e. all its actionswere determined
in advance by ready-made structures,
internallyinherent to it, and by
the distribution of the organs located
within itsbody. These actions, therefore,
could and had to be
completelyexplained by the following
scheme: external effect movement of theinner parts of the
body external reaction. The last represents
theresponse (action, movement) of the
body evoked by the external effect,which in essence is only transformed
by the working of the inner partsof the body, following the scheme
rigidly programmed in its construction.There is a full analogy with
the working of a self-activating mechanism(pressure on a button working
of the parts inside the mechanism move-ment of its external parts).
This explanation excluded the need for anykind of 'incorporeal soul';
everything was beautifully explained withoutits intervention. Such in general,
and on the whole, is
the theoreticalscheme of a reflex
that was developed two hundred years
later innatural science in the work of Sechenov
and Pavlov.[47] But this
scheme is not applicable to man because
in him, asDescartes himself
so well understood, there is a supplementary link
inthe chain of events (i.e. in the
chain of external effect working of theinner bodily organs according
to a ready-made scheme structurallyembodied in them external reaction)
that powerfully interferes with it,forces its way into it, breaking
the ready-made chain and then joiningits disconnected ends together in
a new way, each
time in a differentway, each time in accordance
with new conditions and circumstancesin the external action not
previously foreseen by any prepared schemeand this supplementary link
is 'reflection' or 'consideration'. But
a'reflection' is that activity
(in no way outwardly expressed) which directsreconstruction of the very
schemes of the transformation of
theinitial effect into response. Here
the body itself is the object of itsown activity.[48] Man's 'response'
mechanisms are by no means switched on just
as soon as 'the appropriate button is
pressed', as soon as he experi-ences an effect from outside.
Before he responds he contemplates, i.e.he does not act immediately
according to any one prepared scheme,like an automaton
or an animal, but considers the scheme of the forth-coming action critically, elucidating
each time how far it corresponds tothe needs of the new conditions,and actively correcting,even
designingall over again, the whole
set-up and scheme of the future actions
inaccordance with the external circumstances and the
forms of things.[49] And since
the forms of things
and the circumstances of actions
are in principle infinite in number, the 'soul'
(i.e. 'contemplation') mustConsciousnessbe capable of an infinite
number of actions. But
that is impossible toprovide for in advance
in the form of ready-made, bodily programmedschemes. Thinking is
the capacity of actively building and
recon-structing schemes of external action in accordancewith any newcircum-stances, and does not
operate according to a prepared scheme as anautomaton or any inanimate
body does.[50] 'For while
reason is a universal instrument which can serve for allcontingencies, these ['bodily']
organs have need of some specialadaptation for every particular action,' Descartes
wrote. For that reasonhe was unable to conceive
of the organ of thought bodily, as struct-urally organised in space. Because, in
that case, as many ready-made,structurally programmed
patterns of action would have to be postulatedin it as there were external bodies and
combinations of external bodiesand contingencies that the thinking
body would generally encounter inits path, that is, in principle,
an infinite number. 'From this it follows,'Descartes said, that
it is morally impossible that there should be suffi-cient diversity in any machine to allow
it to act in all the events of life inthe same way as our reason
causes us to act,' i.e. each time takingaccount again of any of the infinite conditions
and circumstances of theexternal action. (The adverb
'morally' in Descartes' statement,
ofcourse, does not mean impossible
'from the aspect of morals' or of'moral principles', etc., moralement
in French meaning 'mentally' or'intellectually' in general.)[51] Spinoza
counted the considerations that drove Descartes
to adopt
the concept of 'soul' to be quite reasonable.
But why not suppose thatthe organ of thought, while
remaining wholly corporeal and thereforeincapable of having schemes of
its present and future actions ready-made and innate within
it together with its bodily-organised structure,was capable of actively building
them anew each time in accordancewith the forms and arrangement
of the 'external things'? Why notsuppose that the thinking thing was designed
in a special way; that nothaving any ready-made schemes of
action within it, it
acted for thatvery reason in accordance with whatever
scheme was dictated to it ata given moment
by the forms and combinations of other bodies locatedoutside it? For that was the
real role or function of the thinking thing,the only functional definition of thinking corresponding
to the facts that itwas impossible to deduce from structural analysis
of the organ in whichand by means of which it
(thinking) was performed. Even more so,a functional definition of thinking
as action according to the shape ofany other thing also
puts structural, spatial study of the thinking thingon the right track, i.e. study
in particular of the body of the brain. It isnecessary to elucidate and discover
in the thinking thing
those verystructural features that enable
it to perform its specific function, i.e. toact according to the scheme
of its own structure but according to thescheme and location of all other things, including
its own body.[52] In that
form the materialist
approach to the investigation of thought ---
comes out clearly. Such is the truly
materialist, functional definition ofthought, or its definition as
the active function of a natural body organ-ised in a special
way, which prompts both logic (the system of functionaldefinitions of thought) and
brain physiology (a system of conceptsreflecting the material structure
of- the organ in and by which thisfunction is performed) to make
a really scientific investigation of theproblem of thought, and which
excludes any possibility of interpretingthinking and the matter of
its relation to the brain by the logic of eitherspiritualist and dualist constructions or of vulgar
mechanistic ones.[53] In order
to understand thought as a function,
i.e. as the mode ofaction of thinking things in
the world of all other things, it is necessaryto go beyond the
bounds of considering what goes on
inside thethinking body, and how (whether
it is the human brain or the humanbeing as a whole who possesses
this brain is a matter of indifference),and to examine the real system
within which this function is performed,i.e. the system of relations
'thinking body and its object'. What
wehave in mind here, moreover, is
not any single object or other in accord-ance with whose form the thinking
body's activity is built in any onespecific case, but any
object in general, and correspondingly
anypossible 'meaningful act' or action
in accordance with the form
of itsobject.[54] Thought can
therefore only be understood through investigationof its mode of action in
the system thinking body nature as
a whole(with Spinoza it is 'substance',
'God'). But if we examine
a system ofsmaller volume and scale, i.e.
the relations of the thinking body with aswide a sphere of 'things'
and their forms as you like, but still
limited,then we shall not arrive at
what thought is in general (thought in
thewhole fullness of its possibilities
associated with its nature), but only atthat limited mode of thinking that
happens in a given case; and we shalltherefore be taking only definitions
of a partial case of thinking, only itsmodus (in Spinoza's parlance)
as scientific definitions of thought
ingeneral.[55] The whole
business consists in this,
that the thinking body(in accordance with its
nature) is not linked at all by
its structural,anatomical organisation with
any partial mode of action whatsoever(with any partial form of
the external bodies). It is linked
with them,but only currently, at the
given moment, and by no means originally orforever. Its mode of action
has a clearly expressed universal character,i.e. is constantly being extended,
embracing ever newer and newerthings and forms of things,
and actively and plastically adapting itselfto them.[56] That is
why Spinoza also defined thought as
an attribute ofsubstance,
and not as its modus,
not as a partial case. Thus heaffirmed, in the language
of his day, that the single system, within
whichthought was found of necessity
and not fortuitously (which it may ormay not be), was not a
single body or even as wide a range of bodiesas you wished, but only and
solely nature as a whole.
The individualbody possessed thought only by
virtue of chance or coincidence. Thecrossing and combination of masses of
chains of cause and effect couldlead in one case to the
appearance of a thinking body and in anothercase simply to a body, a
stone, a tree, etc. So that the individual body,even the human body, did not
possess thought one whit of necessity.Only nature as a whole was
that system which possessed all its perfec-tions, including thought, of absolute
necessity, although it did not realisethis perfection in any single
body and at any moment of time, or in any
of its 'modi'.[57] In defining
thought as an attribute Spinoza towered
above anyrepresentative of mechanistic
materialism and was at
least twocenturies in advance of his
time in putting forward a thesis that Engelsexpressed in rather different words:
'The point is, however, that mech-anism (and also the
materialism of the eighteenth century) does not getaway from abstract necessity, and
hence not from chance either. Thatmatter evolves out of itself the
thinking human brain is for him [Haeckel]a pure accident, although necessarily
determined, step by step, whereit happens. But the truth
is that it
is in the nature of matter to advanceto the evolution of thinking
beings, hence, too, this always necessarilyoccurs wherever the conditions for
it (not necessarily identical at allplaces and times) are present.' [Dialectics
of Nature][58] That is
what distinguishes materialism, sensible
and dialectical,from mechanistic materialism that
knows and recognises only onevariety of 'necessity',
namely that which is described in the language ofmechanistically interpreted physics and mathematics.
Yes, only Natureas a whole, understood as an infinite whole
in space and time, genera-ting its own partial
forms from itself, possesses at any moment of time,though not at any point of
space, all the wealth of its attributes,i.e. those properties that are reproduced in its makeup
of necessity andnot by a chance, miraculous
coincidence that might just as well nothave happened.[59] Hence it
inevitably follows logically, as
Engels said, 'that matterremains eternally the same in
all its transformations, that none of itsattributes can ever be lost, and
therefore, also, that with the same ironnecessity that it will exterminate
on the earth its
highest creation, thethinking mind, it must
somewhere else and at another time
againproduce it.'[60] That was
Spinoza's standpoint, a circumstance that seeminglygave Engels grounds
for replying categorically and unambiguously toPlekhanov when he
asked: 'So in your opinion old
Spinoza wasright in saying that thought
and extension were nothing but twoattributes of one and the
same substance?' "Of course," answeredEngels, "old Spinoza was quite right".'[61] Spinoza's definition
means the following: in man, as in any otherpossible thinking creature, the
same matter thinks as in other cases(other modi) only 'extends' in the
form of stones or any other 'unthinkingE2:Endnote
49:0abody'; that thought in fact
cannot be separated
from world matter andcounterposed to it itself
as a special, incorporeal 'soul',
and it (thought)is matter's own perfection. That
is how Herder and Goethe, La
Mettrieand Diderot, Marx
and Plekhanov (all great 'Spinozists')
and even theyoung Schelling, understood
Spinoza.[62] Such, let
us emphasise once more, is the general, methodologicalposition that later allowed Lenin
to declare that it was reasonable
toassume, as the very foundation
of matter, a property
akin to sensationthough not identical with it,
the property of reflection. Thought,
too,according to Lenin, is the
highest form of development
of this universalproperty or attribute, extremely
vital for matter. And if we deny matterthis most important of its
attributes, we shall be thinking of matter itself'imperfectly',
as Spinoza put it, or simply, as
Engels and Lenin
wrote,incorrectly, one-sidedly, and mechanistically.
And then, as a result, weshould continually be falling into
the most real Berkeleianism, into inter-preting nature as a
complex of our sensations, as the bricks or elementsabsolutely specific to the animated
being from which the whole world ofideas is built (i.e. the world
as and how we know it). Because Berkele-ianism too is the absolutely
inevitable complement making good of
aone-sided, mechanistic understanding of
nature. That is why
Spinozatoo said that substance, i.e.
the universal world matter, did not possessjust the single attribute of
'being extended' but also possessed manyother properties and attributes
as inalienable from it (inseparable from itthough separable from any 'finite' body).[63] Spinoza said more
than once that it was impermissible to representthought as attribute in
the image and likeness of human thought;it was only the universal property of substance
that was the basis of any'finite thought', including human
thought, but in no case was it identicalwith it. To represent thought
in general in the image
and likeness ofexisting human
thought, of its modus, or 'particular case, meant simply torepresent it incorrectly, in 'an
incomplete way', by a 'model', so to say,of its far from most perfected image (although
the most perfected knownto us).[64] With that
Spinoza also linked his profound theory
of truth anderror, developed in detail
in the Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata(Ethics), Tractatus de intellectus ernendatione, Tractatus
theologico-politicus,
and in numerous letters.[65] If the mode
of action of the thinking body as a whole is determinedin the form of an 'other', and not of
the immanent structure of 'this' body,the problem arises, how ever are
we to recognise error? The questionwas posed then with special
sharpness because it appeared in ethicsand theology as
the problem of 'sin' and 'evil'. The
criticism of Spinozismfrom the angle of theology was invariably directed
at this point; Spinoza'steaching took all the sense
out of the very distinguishing
of 'good andevil', 'sin and
righteousness, 'truth
and error'. In fact, in what then didthey differ?{ L22,
L23, L24,
L25, L25A.
}[66] Spinoza's
answer again was
simple, like any fundamentally trueanswer. Error (and hence 'evil'
and 'sin') was not a characteristic ofideas and actions as regards
their own composition, and was not
apositive attribute of them. The erring man also
acted in strict accordancewith a thing's form, but
the question was what the thing was. If it were'trivial', 'imperfect'
in itself, i.e. fortuitous, the mode of action adapted to itwould also be
imperfect. And if a person transferred this mode of actionto another thing, he would slip up.[67] Error, consequently,
only began when a mode of action that waslimitedly true was given universal
significance, when the relative
wastaken for the absolute. It
is understandable why Spinoza put so low avalue on acting by abstract,
formal analogy, formal deduction based onan abstract universal. What was
fixed in the abstract
'idea' was whatmost often struck the eye.
But it, of course, could be a quite accidentalproperty and form of the thing;
and that meant that
the narrower thesphere of the natural whole
with which the person was concerned, thegreater was the measure of
error and the smaller the measure of truth.For that very reason the activity
of the thinking body was in direct pro-portion to the adequateness of its ideas.
The more passive the person,the greater was the power of the nearest,
purely external circumstancesover him, and the more his mode of action was determined
by the chanceform of things; conversely, the
more actively he extended the sphere ofnature determining his activity,
the more adequate were his ideas. Thecomplacent position of the philistine was therefore
the greatest sin.[68] Man's thinking
could achieve 'maximum perfection' (and then
itwould be identical with thought as the attribute
of substance) only in onecase, when his actions conformed with
all the conditions that the infiniteaggregate of interacting things,
and of their forms and combinations,imposed on them, i.e. if they were built in accordance
with the absolutelyuniversal necessity
of the natural whole and not simply with some one ofits limited forms. Real earthly man was, of
course, still very, very far fromthat, and the attribute of thought
was therefore only realised in him in avery limited and 'imperfect'
(finite) form; and it would be fallacious to buildoneself an idea of thinking as an attribute
of substance in the image andlikeness of finite human thought.
On the contrary one's
finite thoughtmust be built in the image and likeness of thought
in general. For finitethought the philosophical, theoretical definition
of thinking as an attributeof substance poses some sort
of ideal model, to which man can andmust endlessly approximate, though
never having the power to
bringhimself up to it in level of 'perfection'.[69] That is why the
idea of substance and its all-embracing
necessityfunctioned as the principle of the constant perfecting
or improvementof intellect.
As such it had
immense significance. Every 'finite'
thingwas correctly understood only as
a 'fading moment' in the bosom ofinfinite substance; and not one
of its 'partial forms', however oftenencountered, should be given universal significance.[70] In order
to disclose the really general,- truly universal
forms ofthings in accordance with which the 'perfected'
thinking body should act,another criterion and another mode of knowledge
than formal abstractionwas required. The idea of substance
was not formed by abstracting theattribute that belonged equally
to extension and thought. The abstractand general in them was only that they existed,
existence in general, i.e.an absolutely empty determination in no way
disclosing the nature of theone or the other. The really general (infinite,
universal) relation betweenthought and spatial, geometric reality
could only be understood, i.e. theidea of substance arrived at, through real understanding
of their mode ofinteraction within
nature. Spinoza's whole
doctrine was just thedisclosureof this 'infinite' relation.[71] Substance thus
proved to be an absolutely necessary condition,without assuming which it was impossible
in principle to understand themode of the interaction between
the thinking body and the world withinwhich it operated as a thinking
body. This
is a profoundly dialecticalpoint. Only by proceeding from the
idea of substance could the thinkingbody understand
both itself and the reality with and
within which itoperated and about which it
thought; any other way it could not under-stand side power, to a theologically
interpreted 'God, to a miracle. But,having once understood the
mode of its actions (i.e.
thought), thethinking body just so
comprehended substance as the absolutelynecessary condition of interaction
with the external world.[72] Spinoza
called the mode of knowledge or
cognition describedhere 'intuitive'.
In creating an adequate idea
of itself, i.e. of the form ofits own movement along the
contours of external objects, the thinkingbody thus also created an
adequate idea of
the forms and contours ofthe objects themselves. Because
it was
one and the same form,oneand the same contour.
In this
understanding of the intuitive therewas nothing resembling subjective
introspection. Rather
the contrary.On Spinoza's lips intuitive
knowledge was a synonym of
rationalunderstanding by the thinking body
of the laws of its own actions withinnature. In
giving itself a rational account of
what and how it did in factoperate, the thinking body at
the same time formed a true
idea of theobject of its activity.[73] From that
followed the consistent materialistconclusion that 'thetrue definition
of any one
thing neither involves nor expresses anythingexcept the nature
of the thing defined'.[Ethics] That
is why there canonly be one correct definition
(idea) in contrast and in opposition to
theplurality and variety of the individual bodies of the same nature. Thesebodies are
as real as the unity (identity) of their 'nature' expressed by thedefinition in the 'attribute
of thought' and by real diversity in the 'attribute of extension'. Variety
and plurality are clearly
understood here as {
subjective versus}{
?? }modes of realisation of their own
opposition i.e. of the^ identity
and { theobjective
} See Endnote
73.^ unity
of their 'nature'. That is a distinctly dialectical
understanding of
the relation between them, in contrast to
the feeble eclectic
formula(often fobbed off dialectics) that
'both unity and plurality', 'both identityand difference- equally really exist.
Because eclectic pseudodialectics,when it comes down
to solving the problem of knowledge
and of'definition' or 'determination',
arrives safely at exactly
the contrary(compared with Spinoza's solution),
at the idea that 'the definition of aconcept' is a verbally fixed
form of expression
in consciousness, in theidea of a real, sensuously given variety.[74] Talk of
the objective identity,
existing outside the head, of thenature of a given range of various and
opposing single phenomena thussafely boils down to talk
about the purely formal unity (i.e.
similarity,purely external identity) of sensuously
contemplated, empirically
giventhings, of isolated facts, formally
subsumed under 'concept'. And it thengenerally becomes impossible to
consider the 'definition of the concept'as the determination of the
nature of the defined thing. The startingpoint then proves to be not
the 'identity and unity'
of the phenomenabut in fact the 'variety
and plurality' of isolated facts allegedly existing{
?? }originally quite 'independently' of one
another, and later only formallyunited, tied together as it
were with string, by the 'unity of the concept'and the 'identity of the name'. So the
sole result proves to be the identityin consciousness (or rather in name) of
the initially heterogeneous facts,and their purely verbal 'unity'. See
Endnote 73—Organic.[75] Hence it
is not difficult to understand
why Neopositivists aredissatisfied with Spinoza and attack
the logical principle of his thinking.'Spinoza's metaphysic is the best
example of what may be called "logicmonism" the doctrine, namely,
that the world as a whole is
a singlesubstance, none of whose parts
are logically capable
of existing alone.The ultimate basis for this view
is the belief that every proposition has asingle subject and a single
predicate, which leads us to the conclusionthat relations and plurality must be illusory.'[76] The alternative
to Spinoza's view, in fact, is the
affirmation thatany 'part'
of the world is
not only 'capable' of 'existing' independently ofall other parts, but must
do so. As another authority of this trend postu-lated it, 'the world is the
totality of facts not of things', by virtue of which'the world divides into facts',
and so 'any one can either be the case ornot be the case, and everything else remain the same'.
[Wittgenstein][77] Thus, according
to the 'metaphysic of Neopositivism',
the externalworld must be considered some
kind of immeasurable accumulation,a simple conglomeration,
of 'atomic facts' absolutely independent ofeach other, the 'proper determination'
of each of which is bound to beabsolutely independent of
the determination of any other fact.
Thedetermination (definition, description)
remains 'correct' even given thecondition that there are
no other facts in general. In
other words,'a scientific consideration
of the world' consists in a
purely formal,verbal uniting of a handful
of odd facts by subsuming them under oneand the same term, under one
and the same 'general'. The 'general',interpreted only as the 'meaning
of the term or sign', always turns out tobe something quite arbitrary or
'previously agreed upon', i.e. 'conven-tional'. The 'general'
(unity and identity) - as the sole result
of the'scientific logical' treatment of
the 'atomic facts',
is consequently not theresult at all, but a previously
established, conventional meaning of theterm, and nothing more.[78] Spinoza's position,
of course, had no connection with this principleof 'logical analysis' of the phenomena given
in contemplation and imagin-ation. For
him the 'general', 'identical', 'united' were by no means illusionscreated only by our speech (language), by its
subject-predicate structure(as Russell put it), but
primarily the real, general nature things. And thatnature must find its verbal expressionin acorrectdefinition of the concept.It is not true, moreover,
that 'relations and
plurality must be illusory' forSpinoza, as Russell said. That
is not at all like Spinoza, and the affirm-ation of
it is on Russell's conscience, that he should have stooped
so lowto discredit the
'concept of substance' in the eyes of 'modern science' as'incompatible with modern logic and with scientific
method'.[79] One thing,
however, is beyond doubt here: what Russell called'modern logic and scientific method'
really is incompatible with the logicof Spinoza's thinking, with his
principles of the development of scientificdefinitions, with his understanding
of 'correct definitions'. For Spinoza'relations and plurality' were not
'illusory' (as Russell described them)and 'identity and unity' were
not illusions created solely by the 'subject-predicate structure' (as Russell himself
thought). Both the one
and theother were wholly real, and both
existed in 'God', i.e. in the very
natureof things, quite irrespective
of whatever the verbal structures of
theso-called 'language of science' were.[80] But for
Bertrand Russell, both the one
and the other were equallyillusions. 'Identity' (i.e. the
principle of substance, of the general natureof things), was an illusion
created by language and 'relations andplurality' were illusions created
by our own sensuality. But what, in fact,is independent of our illusions?
I do not know and I don't want to know;I don't want to know because
I cannot, Russell answered. I know onlywhat is the 'world' given to me
in my sensations and perceptions (whereit is something 'plural') and
in my language (where it is
something'identical' and related). But
what is there besides this 'world'? God onlyknows, answered Russell, word for
word repeating Bishop
Berkeley'sthesis, though not risking to affirm categorically
after him that 'God' in fact'knew' it, because it was still not known if God himself
existed.[81] There we
have the polar contrast of the positions of Spinoza
andof Berkeley and
Hume (whom the Neopositivists
are now trying togalvanise back to life). Berkeley
and Hume also primarily attacked thewhole concept of substance, trying
to explain it as the product
of an'impious mind'. Because there is
a really unpersuasive alternative here,namely two polar and mutually
exclusive solutions of one and the sameproblem the problem of
the relation of 'the world in consciousness'(in particular in 'correct definition')
to the 'world
outside consciousness'(outside 'verbal definition'). For
here a choice must be made: eithernature, including man as
part of it, must be understood through the logicof the 'concept of substance', or
it must be
interpreted as a complex ofone's sensations.[82] But let
us return to consideration of Spinoza's conception.
Spinozawell understood all the sceptical
arguments against the possibility offinding a single one correct
definition of the thing that we are justified
intaking as a definition of the nature of the thing
itself and not of thespecificstate and arrangement of the organs within ourselves,in the formofwhichthis thing is represented 'within us'. In considering
different variants of theinterpretation of one and the same thing,Spinoza drew thefollowingdirectconclusion: 'All these things sufficiently show that
every one judges thingsby the constitution of his
brain, or rather accepts the affections
of hisimagination
in the place of things.' In other words, we have
within us, inthe form of ideas, not the
thing itself and its proper form, but only theinner state that the effect of the external
things evoked in our body (in thecorpus of the brain).[83] Therefore,
in the ideas we directly have of the external world, twoquite dissimilar things are muddled
and mixed up: the form of our ownbody and the form of the bodies outside it. The naive
person immediatelyand uncritically takes this hybrid
for an external thing, and thereforejudges things in conformity with the specific state
evoked in his brain andsense organs by an external
effect in no way resembling that
state.Spinoza gave full consideration
to the Cartesians' argument (later takenup by Bishop Berkeley),
that toothache was
not at all
identical ingeometric form to a dentist's drill
and even to the geometric
form of thechanges the drill produced in the tooth and the brain.
The brain of everyperson, moreover, was built and tuned
differently, from which we get thesceptical conclusion of the plurality of truths and
of the absence of a truthone and the same for all thinking
beings. 'For every one has heard theexpressions: So many heads,
so many ways of thinking; Each is wise inhis own manner; Differences of
brains are not less common than differ-ences of taste; all which
maxims show that men
decide upon mattersaccording to the constitution of
their brains, and imagine rather thanunderstand things.' {
Cash
Value—be aware that you are part of an organism.
}[84] The point
is this to understand and correctly determine the
thingitself, its proper form, and not the means by which
it is represented insideourselves, i.e. in the form of geometric
changes in the body of our brainand its microstructures. But how is that to
be done? Perhaps, in order toobtain the pure form
of the thing, it is simply necessary to 'subtract' fromthe idea all
its elements that introduce the arrangement (disposition) andmeans of action of our
own body, of its sense organs and brain into thepure form of the thing:[85] But (1)
we know as
little of how our brain is constructed and whatexactly it introduces into the
composition of the idea of a thing as weknow of the external body
itself; and (2) the thing in general cannot begiven to us in any other way than through the specific
changes that it hasevoked in our
body. If we 'subtract' everything received from the thing inthe course of its refraction through
the prism of our body, sense organs,and brain, we get pure nothing.
'Within us' there remains nothing, noidea of any kind. So it is impossible to proceed
that way.[86] However differently
from any other thing
man's body and brain arebuilt they all have something in common with
one another, and it is to thefinding of this something common
that the activity of reason is in factdirected, i.e. the real activity of our body that
we call 'thinking'.[87] In other words
an adequate idea{is} only
the conscious state of ourbody identical in form
with the thing, outside the body. This
can berepresented quite clearly.
When I describe a circle
with my hand on apiece of paper (in real space),
my body, according to
Spinoza, comesinto a state fully identical
with the form of the circle outside my body,into a state of real action
in the form of a circle. My body (my hand)really describes a circle, and the awareness
of this state (i.e. of the formof my own action in the
form of the thing) is also the idea,
which is,moreover, 'adequate'.[88] And since
'the human body needs
for its preservation
many otherbodies by which it is, as
it were, continually regenerated', and
since it'can move and arrange external bodies
in many ways', it is in the activityof the human body in the
shape of another external body that Spinozasaw the key to the solution of the whole
problem. Therefore 'the humanmind is adapted to the
perception of many
things, and its aptitudeincreases in proportion to the
number of ways in which its body can bedisposed.' In other words, the
more numerous and varied the means ithas 'to move and arrange external
bodies', the more it has 'in common'with other bodies. Thus the
body, knowing how to be in a
state ofmovement along the
contours of circle, in that way knows how to be in astate in common with the state and arrangement
of all circles or externalbodies moving in a circle.[89] In possessing
consciousness of my own state (actions along theshape of some contour or other),
I thus also possess a quite exactawareness (adequate idea) of the
shape of the external body. That,however, only happens where and when I actively determine
myself, andthe states of my body, i.e.
its actions, in accordance with the shape ofthe external body, and not
in conformity with the structure and arrange-ment of my own body and
its 'parts'. The more of these actions I knowhow to perform, the more perfect
is my thinking, and the more adequateare the ideas included in
the 'mind' (as Spinoza continued to express it,using the language normal
to his contemporaries), or
simply in theconscious states of my body,
as he interpreted the term 'mind' onneighbouring pages.Bk.XIV:1:96.[90] Descartes'
dualism between the world of external objects and
theinner states of the human
body thus disappeared right
at the very startof the explanation. It is
interpreted as a difference within one and thesame world (the world of bodies), as
a difference in their mode of exist-ence ('action'). The 'specific structure'
of the human body and brain;is here, for the first time,
interpreted not as a barrier separating us fromthe world of things, which are not at all like that
body, but on the contraryas the same property of
universality that enables the thinking body(in contrast to all others) to be
in the very same
states as things, and topossess forms in common with them.[91] Spinoza himself
expressed it thus:
'There will exist in the humanmind an adequate idea
of that which is common and proper to the humanbody, and to any external bodies
by which the human body is generallyaffected of that which is
equally in the part
of each of these externalbodies and in the whole is common and proper.'[92] 'Hence it
follows that the more things
the body has in common with2P38other bodies, the more things will the mind be adapted
to perceive.'[93] Hence, also
it follows that 'some ideas or notions exist which
arecommon to
all men, for .... all bodies
agree in some things, which ... mustbe adequately, that is to
say, clearly and distinctly,
perceived by all.' In no case can these 'common ideas'
be interpreted as specific forms ofthe human body, and they are only taken for
the forms of external bodiesby mistake (as happened with
the Cartesians and later with Berkeley),despite the fact that 'the
human mind perceives no external body asactually existing, unless through the ideas of the
affections of its body'.[94] The fact
is that the 'affections
of one's body' are quite objective,being the actions of the body
in the world of bodies, and not the resultsof the action of bodies on
something unlike them, 'in corporeal'. There-fore, 'he who possesses a body fit
for many things possesses a mind ofwhich the greater part is external'.[95] From all
that it follows that 'the more we
understand individualSee Endnote
73—Organic.objects, the more we
understand G-D,' i.e. the general
universal natureof things, world
substance; the more individual
things our activityembraces and the deeper and more
comprehensively we determine ourbody to act along the shape
of the external bodies themselves, and themore we become an active component in the endless
chain of the causalrelations of the natural whole,
the greater is the extent to which
thepower of our thinking is increased,
and the less there is of the 'specificconstitution' of our body and
brain mixed into the
'ideas' making them'vague and inadequate'
(ideas of the imagination
and not of 'intellect').The more active
our body is, the more universal it
is, the less it intro-duces 'from itself', and the more
purely it discloses the real nature ofthings. And the more passive
it is, the more the constitution and arrange-ment of the organs within
it (brain, nervous system, sense organs, etc.)affect ideas.[96] Therefore the
real composition of psychic activity (including
thelogical component of thought) is
not in the least determined by thestructure and arrangement of the
parts of the human body and brain,but by the external conditions
of universally human activity in the worldof other bodies.[97] This
functional determination gives
an exact orientation to structuralanalysis of the brain, fixes the general goal, and
givesacriterion by whichwe can distinguish the structures
through which thinking
is carried onwithin the brain from those
that are completely unrelated to the processof thought, but govern, say, digestion, circulation
of the blood, and so on.[98] That is
why Spinoza reacted very ironically to
all contempor-aneous 'morphological' hypotheses,
and in particular to that of thespecial role of the 'pinealgland'
as primarily the organ of the 'mind'.PinealGlandOn this he said straight out:
since you are philosophers, do not buildspeculative hypotheses
about the structure of the body of
the brain,
but leave investigation of what goes on
inside the thinking body todoctors, anatomists, and physiologists. You,
as philosophers, not onlycan, but are bound to,
work out for doctors and anatomists
andphysiologists the functional
determination of thinking and not itsstructural determination, and you
must do it strictly and precisely, andnot resort to vague ideasaboutan'incorporeal mind', {transcendent}
'God',and so on. See
Endnote 73—Organic.[99] But you
can find the functional determination of thought only if youdo not probe into the thinking body (the
brain), but carefully examine thereal composition of its objective
activities among the other bodies of theinfinitely varied universum Within
the skull you
will not find anything towhich a functional definitionof thought could be applied,because thinkingis a function of external, objective activity. And
you must therefore invest-igate not the anatomy and
physiology of the brain but the 'anatomy andphysiology' of the
'body' whose active function
in fact is thought, i.e. the'inorganic body of man', the 'anatomy
and physiology' of the world of hisculture, the world of the 'things'
that he produces and reproduces by hisactivity.[100] The sole
'body' that thinks from
the necessity built into its special'nature' (i.e. into its specific
structure) is not the individual brain at all,and not even the whole man
with a brain, heart, and hands, and all theanatomical features peculiar to him. Of
necessity, according to Spinoza,only substance possesses thought.
Thinking is necessary premise andindispensable condition (sine qua non) in all
nature as a whole.{ ^an indispensable or
essential condition}Bk.XIB:8256.[101] But
that, Marx affirmed, is not
enough. According to him, onlynature of necessity
thinks, nature that has achieved the stage of mansocially producing his own life,
nature changing and knowing itself inthe person of man or of
some other creature like him in this respect,universally altering nature, both that
outside him and his own. A
body ofsmaller scale and less 'structural complexity' will
not think. Labour {work}{ by
enlightened self-interest
}is the process of changing
nature by the action of social man, and is
the'subject' to which thought belongs
as 'predicate'. But nature, the univer-sal matter of nature,
is also its substance. Substance,
having becomethe subject of all its changes in man, the cause
of itself (causa sui).

What I dislike in this kind of argumentation is
the basic positivisticattitude, which from my point
of view is untenable, and whichseems to me to come to
the same thing as Berkeley's principle,{To
be is to be perceived}esse
est percipi. "Being"
is always something
which is mentallyconstructed by us,
that is, something which we freely posit
(in thelogical sense). The justification of such
constructs does not lie intheir derivation from what is given by
the senses. Such a type ofderivation (in the senseoflogical deducibility) isnowhere
tobehad,not even in the domain of pre-scientific
thinking. The justificationof the constructs,which
represent "reality" for us,lies alone in theirquality of making intelligible what
is sensorily given (the vaguecharacter of
this expression is here forced upon me by my strivingfor brevity). Applied to
the specifically chosen example thisconsideration tells us the following: .....

Berkeley, Bishop
George, 1685 -1753; Kemerling,
WikipediA,
Anglo-Irish Anglican bishop, philosopher, and scientist, best known
for his Empiricist
philosophy {the philosophic doctrine that all knowledge
is derived from sense experience}, which holds that everything
save the spiritual
exists only insofar as it is perceived by the senses.Berkeley from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Bohr,
Niels Henrik David, 1885 -1962; Kemerling,
WikipediA, Danish physicist who was the first to apply the quantum
theory, which restricts the energy of a system to certain discrete
values, to the problem of atomic and molecular structure. For this work
he received the Nobel
Prize for Physics in 1922. He developed the so-called Bohr theory of
the atom and liquid model of the atomic nucleusBohr from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Descartes,
René, 1596 -1650; Bk.XX:18819. Kemerling,
WikipediA, Latin Renatius Cartesius French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher.
Because he was one of the first to oppose scholastic Aristotelianism,
he has been called the father of modern philosophy. He began by methodically
doubting knowledge based on authority, the senses, and reason, then found
certainty in the intuition that, when he is thinking, he exists; this he
expressed in the famous statement “I think, therefore I am.” He developed
a dualistic
system in which he distinguished radically
between mind, the essence of which is thinking, and matter, the essence
of which is extension in three dimensions. Descartes's metaphysical system
is intuitionist,
derived by reason from innate ideas, but his physics and physiology, based
on sensory knowledge, are mechanistic and empiricist.Descartes from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Diderot, Denis
1713 -1784; [61]; Kemerling,
WikipediA, French man of letters and philosopher who, from 1745 to 1772, served
as chief editor
of the Encyclopédie,
one of the principal works of the Age of Enlightenment.Diderot from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Geulincx, Arnold,
1624 -1669; [26], Kemerling,
WikipediA, Flemish metaphysician, logician, and leading exponent of a philosophical
doctrine known as occasionalism
based on the work of René Descartes, as extended to include a comprehensive
ethical theory.Geulincx from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Goethe,
Johann Wolfgang von, 1749 -1832;, WikipediA,
German poet, novelist, playwright, and natural philosopher, the
greatest figure of the German Romantic period and of German literature
as a whole.Goethe from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Herder,
Johann Gottfried von 1744 -1803; WikipediA,
German critic, theologian, and philosopher, who was the leading
figure of the Sturm
und Drang literary movement and an innovator in the philosophy of history
and culture. His influence, augmented by his contacts with the young J.W.
von Goethe, made him a harbinger of the Romantic movement. He was ennobled
(with the addition of von) in 1802.Herder from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Lassalle, Ferdinand,
1825 -1864; WikipediA,Lassalle was born of Jewish parents; his father, Heymann Lasal,
or Loslauer,
was a wholesale silk merchant and town councilor.Lassalle from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Mill, John
Stuart 1806 -1873; Kemerling,
WikipediA,
English philosopher, economist, and exponent of Utilitarianism.
He was prominent as a publicist in the reforming age of the 19th century,
and remains of lasting interest as a logician and an ethical theorist.Mill from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Pavlov, Ivan
Petrovich, 1849 -1936; WikipediA,
Russian physiologist known chiefly for his development of the concept
of the conditioned
reflex. In a now-classic experiment, he trained a hungry dog to salivate
at the sound of a bell, which was previously associated with the sight
of food. He developed a similar conceptual approach, emphasizing the importance
of conditioning, in his pioneering studies relating human behaviour to
the nervous system. He was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for his work on digestive
secretions.Pavlov from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Veblen, Thorstein
Bunde, 1857 -1929; Kemerling,
WikipediA,
Austrian-born English philosopher, who was one of the most influential
figures in British philosophy during the second quarter of the 20th century
and who produced two original and influential systems of philosophical
thought—his logical theories and later his philosophy of language.Veblen from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Wittgenstein,
Ludwig Josef Johan, 1889 -1951; Kemerling,
WikipediA, Austrian-born English philosopher, who was one of the most influential
figures in British philosophy during the second quarter of the 20th century
and who produced two original and influential systems of philosophical
thought—his logical theories and later his philosophy of language.Wittgenstein from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Marx and
Engels dismissed
the idealism, declaring
Hegel to be "standing
on his head,"and accepting
for themselves the duty to place Hegel's feet back on terra firma.
Onebegins by abandoning that
whole field of absolute egos and absolute ideas and attachingoneself to a dialectical materialism in which the
events of the social and political world arebrought
about by factors that are, at base, not transcendent,
but economic. Economicforces
are not the sole determinants of social dynamics and individual behavior,
but theyare the dominant forces.
As biological entities, people are motivated, from the first, by theneeds of the body—not by philosophical or moral abstractions,
but by the creature-needsthat
arise from their very materiality.

The title of this book may evoke the kind of question
that I hear once in awhile: "Why do you use the word 'selfishness'
to denote virtuous qualitiesDamasio—biologicalof character, when that
word antagonizes so many
people to whom itHampshire:180[1a]does not mean the things you mean?"E4:Bk.III:251

To those who ask it, my answer is: "For
the reason that makes you afraidof it."

But there are others, who would not ask that question,
sensing the moralcowardice it implies, yet who are unable to formulate
my actual reason orto identify the profound moralissue
involved. It is to them that I will givea more explicit answer.

It is not a mere semantic
issue nor a matter of arbitrary choice. Themeaning ascribed in popular usage
to the word "selfishness" is notmerely wrong: it represents a
devastating intellectual "package-deal,"
which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the
arrestedmoral development of mankind.

In popular usage,
the word "selfishness" is a synonym of evil; the imageit conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples
over piles of corpses toachieve his own ends, who cares for no living being
and pursues nothingbut the gratification of the
mindless whims of any immediate moment.

A genuine selfishness—that
is: a genuine concern with discovering what
E4:Bk.III:251is to one's self-interest, an acceptance of the responsibility
of achieving it,a refusal ever to betray it by acting
on the blind whim, mood, impulse orfeeling of the moment, an
uncompromising loyalty to one's judgment,convictions and values—represents
a profound
moral achievement.Those who assert that "everyone is
selfish" commonly intend their state-ment as an expression of cynicism
and contempt. But the truth is thattheir statement pays mankind a compliment it does
not deserve.

If Hobbes
is to be regarded as the firstof
a distinctively British philosophical tradition, the Dutch-Jewish philosopher
Benedict
Spinoza (1632–77)appropriately
occupies the same position in continental Europe.Unlike Hobbes, Spinoza did not provoke a long-running
philosophical debate.In fact,
his philosophy was neglected for a century after his death and was in any
case too much of a self-contained system to invite debate.Nevertheless, Spinoza held positions on crucial issues
that were in sharp contrast to those taken by Hobbes,and these differences were to grow over the centuries
during whichBritish and continental
European philosophy followed their own paths.

The first of these contrasts with Hobbes
is Spinoza'sattitude toward
natural desires. As has been noted,Hobbes
took self-interested desire for
pleasure as an unchangeable fact about human nature and proceeded to build
a moral and political system to cope with it.Spinoza
did just the opposite. He saw natural desires as a form of bondage.We do not choose to have them of our own
will. Our will cannot be free if it is subject to forces outside itself.Thus our real interests lie not in satisfying these
desiresbut in transforming them
by the application of reason {enlightenment}.Spinoza thus stands in opposition not only to Hobbes
but also to the position later to be taken by Hume,for Spinoza saw reason not as the slave of the passions
butas their master.

The second important contrast is that while individual
humansand their separate interests
are always assumed in Hobbes's
philosophy,this separation is
simply an illusion from Spinoza's viewpoint.Everything that exists is part of a single system,
which is at the same time Nature and G-D.(One possible interpretation of this is that Spinoza
was a pantheist, believing that G-D
exists in every aspect of the world {cosmos}
and not apart from it.)We, too,
are part of this system and are subject to its rationally necessarylaws.Once we know this, we understand how irrational
it would be to desire that things should be different from the way they
are.This means that it is
irrational to envy, to hate, and to feel guilt,for
these emotions presuppose the possibility of things being different.So we cease to feel such emotions
and find peace, happiness,and
even freedom—in Spinoza's terms the only
freedom there can be—in understanding
the {organic}
system of which we are a part.

A view of the world
so different from our everyday conceptions as that of Spinoza'scannot be made to seem remotely plausible when presented
in summary form.To many philosophers it remains implausible even when
complete.Its value for ethics,
however, lies not in its validity as a whole, but in the introduction into
continental European philosophy of a few key ideas:that our everyday nature may not be our true nature;that we are part of a larger unity {G-D};
and that freedom is to be found in following reason.

The idea of freewill, the pillar of conventionaltheology, was thereforeabandoned by Spinoza. It was
a fiction of the human mind, a popularfallacy: "Their idea of liberty therefore
is this—that they know
no causefor their own actions; for
as to saying that their actions depend upontheir will, these are words
to which no idea is attached."
Again, heargues: "men believe themselves
to be freesimply
because they are2P49conscious of their own actions, knowing
nothing of the causes by whichthey are determined
...." { E1:Ap.(10),
E2:XXXV, E3:II.}.Free
will was thusfor Spinoza a concept
scientifically meaningless. {
E2:XLIX,
E1:XXXII,E2:XLVIII,
E2:XLVIII(2)n.}.It
was founded on
our ignorance as to underlyingpsychological and physical causes,
on our unconsciousness, in otherwords, of our minds and bodies.
Freewill
was an inadequateidea,a confused one,
which vanished when we understood
all the causesof human behavior. Free will,
we might say, was the projection inmetaphysics
of men whose lives were
slavish, whose lives weremoved by uncomprehended powers in their unconscious
{prejudices}.

Again, however, we cannot but wonder whether
there was not a strong,unconscious compulsion in
Spinoza himself to renounce free
will.How much of this argument was once more a ....

NiCOLE: You said that the failure of
modern socialism was performance.
Is that failure in relation to material achievement or in relation to the
libertyof the individual?

JKG: Both, no doubt. The failure
in material performance was partly anaccident of history. Perhaps it was the
misfortune of socialism that it wasfirst tried in Russia. Managing
Russians may be even more difficult thanmanaging Frenchmen. Also, in 1917,
Russia was still a country of poorTechnologicalpeasants and incompetent
landlords, not of large, well-organized,capitalist enterprises. The other
great socialist experiment has been inChina. The Chinese are more gifted and experienced
in organization thanthe Russians, but this is also a peasant
land where, additionally, popula-tion presses heavily on resources.
That kind of pressure means a lowstandard of living whether a country is
socialist or nonsocialist. So wereone picking the last countries in
the world in which to produce a socialistsuccess,China
and Russia would be prominent candidates,just
after India.